


Pause

by marlowe78



Series: Wake up-verse [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:49:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marlowe78/pseuds/marlowe78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freedom isn't what Jared thought it would be. </p><p>2nd Timestamp for the "Wake up and run"-verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pause

He’s confused.

Well, no. Jared is more than confused. After their hard journey through the forest, after the brittle hope when Jensen made that call to someone who knew someone who would know someone who might give a message to Jensen’s people, after all they had been through to get here, Jared is feeling like he’s in the wrong place.

The people – soldiers, really – are a rough bunch. They slap each other on the shoulder or box their arms and play pretend-fighting all the time. Laughing too loudly and too often, drinking too much. In fact, they behave like nothing Jared has ever seen before. He wonders, sometimes, if he’s even still on his planet, or if they moved to another where aliens rein that just look human…

He feels so out of place in the company of those men and women. Even though he wears the same amount of clothes, the same material and the same color even, he feels more like an outsider than he’d ever felt while he’d been a slave. They might speak the same language as he does, but he can’t understand these people. They won’t tell him anything! If he asks if he can help, they say “No, do whatever you want to” and smile and leave him be, and he … is lost. Because at least, even with all the beatings, all the punishment he’d had to endure, there had been order and orders before. And there is nothing now.

‘Do what you want’. He can’t do what he wants! He doesn’t know what he wants to do! How can they leave him like that, walk past him and smile and still don’t care enough about him to see his distress, his lostness, his need for orders? How can this be better than slavery, if he feels more miserable in freedom than he’d ever done before?

“Jay?”

Jared looks up. Jensen’s standing in front of him, looking a bit like Jared feels. And that’s another thing he hates here: Jensen’s not there for him anymore. He’s not there to talk nonsense to, to tell what he’s feeling and longing for. Not there to smile tentatively and grateful at him when Jared soothes his pain and wow, that sounds utterly selfish, he realizes. Wanting back the times where his friend was hurt so often just so he’d look at him in that open, adoring way? Yeah. Add ‘miserably guilty’ to his list of feelings in this place.

Jensen has tried to talk to him. He’d been there for him from the beginning and every day he’ll ask if Jared wants to do something together. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but Jared has no clue what you could do here. So he’d always shaken his head and when Jensen asked if it was ok if he went to training with some friends or Jeff, Jared had only nodded and smiled.

It’s not that sitting next to him would be any more fun.

“Yeah?”

“Uh… look, I dunno if you… do you…. No. Come on, up. Let’s go to the lake!”

The order lights a fire in Jared’s veins and he feels a tiny bit of embarrassment over the joy he gets from someone ordering him around.

Dammit, this is freedom! He should enjoy that more than someone else shoving him here and there and telling him what to do!

Still, he follows and smiles. Jensen’s next to him, bumping his shoulder into Jared’s and he’s been around enough to know this is not meant as insult or to put a lower slave in its place but is a show of affection.

He bumps back and the smile across his friend’s face is even better than finally getting something to do.

__

They reach the lake soon; it’s not far. This time of the day, most rebels are doing chores or planning things or doing something else rebel-ly. It’s empty save for three kids screeching happily in the water and this? This is what Jared had longed for. Seeing children, not older than Tim had been, playing, without worry, without fear for repercussions. Without a guard standing by to punish every wrong move they make. He stares at them, and it takes him a while to notice the girl’s got a number on her back. The boys don’t, but the little brown-haired devil that’s dunking the other two kids more often than not is wearing the symbol of a house-slave. She can’t be more than nine years old, but that’s old enough to already have her ‘initiated’ in every duty a house-slave might ever come across.

Seeing her laugh, despite what she’s seen and had done to her makes Jared smile kindly. A sudden pang in his heart reminds him of his little friend whom they’d buried not so long ago. Tim might never have had a day like this, but if girls like her one can learn how to smile and be the free spirit that she clearly is, than there is no doubt that freedom is better than orders.

“Sorry” Jensen says and Jared has to blink to get his eyes adjusted to the person near him. He’s also a bit confused.

“What?”

His friend isn’t looking at him, staring unseeing to the lake and the children that are now bathing much more somberly. Jared misses the laughter.

“Sorry I wasn’t around much” Jensen answers after a while, just when Jared is on the brink of forgetting that anyone had spoken. “It… I know it can’t be easy for you”

“What do you mean? Not easy? It’s the easiest time in my life!” And he’s not exaggerating. He’s never had days just being lazy, just sitting and soaking up sun or watching the rain pelt on the dry ground, slowly wetting the dust and turn it into mud.

He’s never had the chance to see mud, and he can’t believe he’s so fond of the stuff.

Jensen’s looking at him now, no trace of the slave left. Oddly, Jared feels a pang of loss, while at the same time his heart beats in joy for the self-assured man that’s analyzing his features now. It doesn’t feel threatening or even patronizing. It feels a bit like with his mother, so so long ago, before they sold him to a new owner. So Jared lets him scrutinize, opens himself up. It’s not like he’s got anything to hide.

“Yeah, well. Let’s just say that I’ve been having some issues with sitting still and doing nothing, so I can imagine that it’s not easy for some… for you”

“Some..? Someone like me? A slave?”

“Well… no. Yes. Uhmm” Jensen scratches his head, smiles awkwardly and turns away for a moment but has his eyes right back before Jared can blink. “Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying it as a bad thing. But you … well, look at it like that: when I’m having a fucking hard time adjusting to leisure and no constant fear, I cannot imagine how confusing and weird it is for you. I’ve known this, I’ve lived like this for years before I was captured, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you haven’t even seen a lake before. Right?”

Jared just nods and looks away as well. He can feel the tears prickle, shooting up stingingly into his head. He doesn’t want to cry, though. It’s no use, no reason. Seeing a lake is a good thing, not being a slave is a great thing. He shouldn’t cry…

But it hurts to know that he’s missed so much. He’s never seen stuff like this, and his mom had never seen stuff like this. So many of the slaves he’s known haven’t ever breathed free air, non-filtered and wild.

“Jay…”

He sniffs and shakes his head. “M ok. No clue why I keep doing this”

“Yeah, me neither” Jen mutters and it gives a jolt of surprise and strangely, joy. Because if Jensen is tearing up as well, it means Jared isn’t some kind of weird freak.

Speaking of…

“Uh, can I ask you something?” he continues when his friend nods “Where … where are we? I mean, which planet?”

“Jeff said it’s Balrota, somewhere in the Decandian Mountains” he looks over “That doesn’t tell you one bit, right?”

Jared feels himself laugh. “No, not really. I think I was born on a planet called… Asskel? Is there a planet like that?”

“Az`khel, yeah. It’s a bit off from here, one of the first colonies that tried to dig themselves out from their self-inflicted famine by introducing the slavery-system again” Jensen spits. His words are harsh, his eyes hard and gleaming with anger. Jared can sympathize, he can, even though he’s never known different than his life. But of course, even in the kitchen he’d heard of the Assimilation of new worlds into the Refugium. What a shitty name for a cruel, cold and callous government, he thinks. It’s like calling a torture-chamber “correction-room”, or “training-center”, all wrong and twisted and utterly fake.

So, apparently, in one of his many moves and confusing travels, Jared has been transported to a planet called Balrota. Which, it seems, is really a good place to be, considering there’s Resistance and nature and freedom still to be had.

Even if it comes with the cost of many lives, Jared thinks as he looks at the sad smile on Jensen’s face. He’s seen it for a while now, on and off. It’s a longing smile, a lonely one, and he remembers when Jeffrey had told Jensen what’d happened to his unit.

What had happened to the girl called Grit, how his friend’s eyes had misted over in sorrow.

“You never told me about her”

Jensen looks over but doesn’t ask. “Not? I should definitely do that, one day. About all of them. Just… not right now” His eyes light up as an idea strikes him and he scrambles up, not fluidly like Jared’s sure he once could and soon will be able to again, when he’s healed completely. Jensen holds his hand out and pulls him up, ginning and letting the sun take over his eyes and face. He pulls off his boots without looking at them, socks as well. “You showed me how to survive. Let me show you how to live for the moment”

With a whoop, he shoves Jared towards the water before overtaking him and running straight into the lake, still fully clothed and laughing like a maniac and drawing Jared right with him, caught in the tide of Jensen’s laughter, not caring that he’s never swam in his lifetime.

Jared’s sure Jensen will pull him out if he drowns.


End file.
